Their posts reflect their own “stuff”: abusive parents, religiously-induced guilt, feelings of social inadequacy, loneliness, human neglect, sexual resentment, repressed homosexuality, or who knows what. They are damaged. We would be, too, if we had their sad history. People normally don’t feel ok about others when they don’t feel ok about themselves.

The self-hating trolls need to be away from their PC and bottle of whisky, instead seeking the compassionate human contact of which they have been deprived.

Some of their language inadvertently betrays more than a mere academic interest in homosexuality. Don’t automatically assume these people are bigoted heterosexuals hanging about obsessively on gay websites.